The Greened House Effect

Stalwart Construction finished on Friday.  When Monday arrived, things seemed pretty quiet around the house.  Except for that exposed housewrap blowing in the wind.  My task was pretty clear:  Get the curtain wall on the house before the winds of winter began to blow in earnest.

Jeff adds exterior curtain wall studs to the back of the house - note the new garage/office addition on the left.

Deep Energy Retrofit?  What was I thinking?

What’s a curtain wall?  In our case it’s a wall built onto the existing exterior surface of the house (walls & roof).  I attached 2”x3” studs, on edge, right over the old siding.  I screwed these through the old siding & sheathing, directly into the old studs underneath using 4” screws.  These studs ran from the top of the foundation to the eaves.  We had removed the aluminum siding that had covered the original redwood, but had decided to leave the redwood in place for a few reasons.  First, the paint on the surface likely contained lead.  Removing & dumping it would be hazardous.  The spray foam would contain the lead paint, sealing it off from the elements.  Second, the siding would keep the 2x3 studs from being in contact with the wood sheathing across its entire surface.  Essentially, the relief of the lap siding held the stud out off of the surface so that the spray foam could expand behind each stud in most places, creating a thermal break.  Finally, leaving the siding meant less overall waste off the site, so the siding was left in place.

Jeff applies FoamItGreen spray foam into the exterior curtain wall cavities (above & below).

After the 2x3 studs were attached, I applied the FoamItGreen spray foam insulation into the cavities, getting 2” – 2 ½” coverage.  This gives us an extra R-14 to R-17 insulation value on top of the R-15 we already had in place, for an R-30 average.

 Jeff installs LP OSB exterior sheathing.

With the spray foam in, I sheathed with LP OSB exterior sheathing and applied housewrap.  Since we were “bumping out” the entire exterior of the house by about four inches, we were able to install new-construction windows from Pro Via.  These triple-pane, gas-filled models will be a vast improvement over the old single-pane windows.

No regrets while removing the old, single-pane windows.

Eventually I’ll be installing LP SmartSide trim and lap siding, but I felt lucky just to get the house sealed up with house-wrap and the new windows before the first snow flew.

The way the house looked in January, after 4 months of Deep Energy Retrofit construction . . . (above & below).

The year ended with some chilly days closing things down outside.  Third Sun Solar came by to officially commission our 4kW solar array on December 30^th, so we rang in the New Year with renewable energy.  We still had a long way to go, but this winter would be the most comfortable we’d ever had in this house.  Come back soon as we add an Ultimate Air Energy Recovery Ventilator, side with LP’s SmartSide engineered wood siding, install Guttersupply.com’s faux copper half-round gutters, and make lots of other improvements as we finish up the exterior at the Greened House effect.